


Summer Love

by evansrogerskitten



Category: Actor RPF, J2 - Fandom, Jared Padalecki - Fandom, Jensen Ackles - Fandom, Supernatural RPF
Genre: AU, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nothing explicit, Open Ending, Pining, Summer Camp AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evansrogerskitten/pseuds/evansrogerskitten
Summary: There's a summer love that Jared will never forget.





	Summer Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Fluff Bingo, Square Filled: Summer Camp AU and for Kink Bingo, Square Filled: Mutual Pining.

In the summer of 1996, fourteen year old Jared Padalecki fell in love for the first time. Well, what he thought love was supposed to feel like. Jared was supposed to be at Camp Kripke for camping, archery, and bonfires. But that summer he fell in love with snarky jokes and a kind smile, with bowlegs in red swim trunks and extra sun kisses on freckled shoulders. The way Jared felt, this love shit, it was blushful triumph and cold misery all rolled into 8 weeks of the best summer of his short life. The older boy was all Jared could think about, searching him out in the dining hall and following him around camp like a shaggy puppy in need of some desperate praise. Jared’s first sting of love and loss was exhilarating and terrifying and hurt like hell as his crush- his handsome, charming, eighteen year old camp counselor- patted Jared on the shoulder and winked as he sauntered away with someone older, someone blonder...**someone that wasn’t Jared.**

_ See ya later, kid._

**Love**, come to find out, **sucked**.

In the summer of 2000, eighteen year old Jared returned to Camp Kripke as a camp counselor. He was there to supervise tweens and save up some money for college. Take some kids on day hikes, supervise the boys from sneaking off to the girls’ cabins (or the nearby boys’ bunks) and take in the great outdoors before he’d leave Texas for the quiet halls of UCLA in September. But no matter his plan for that summer, Jared couldn’t help but fall in love for real this time. He fell in love during moonlit evenings filled with deep chuckles and a Midwestern twang, whispered stories over banned beers and old country songs played on a guitar around a fire pit. He fell in love with the glimmering green eyes of the senior camp counselor, the same guy Jared had loved four years before. Just the two of them, rowing to the middle of the lake at midnight and kissing for the first time under the moonlight. Jared’s shy smile earning a wink as they’d pass in the dining hall, a summer secret of making out behind trees and hiding touches in empty cabins. Jared couldn’t help but tremble as they explored, the summer’s new love giving him a purpose. He wanted to stay at Camp forever, **stay with him forever**. And Jared’s first time, reflections of the full moon, the gasps and heat fumbled inside the boat house as that gorgeous man whispered the four words Jared had dreamt of since he was fourteen.

_ I love you, Jared._

**Love**, well, it **was kind of awesome**. 

At the end of the summer of 2019, on an afternoon of sunshine and thick humidity, Jared returned to Camp Kripke to pick up his son. As his Escalade meandered down the dirt road Jared noted that the camp still looked the same. A strip of rocky beach, kids shrieking and playing in the dark water too cold to stay in longer than ten minutes. Rowboats that could use a fresh coat of red paint lined the dock and a tire swing he remembered flying off of like a rocket, catching air for just a moment before gravity tossed him into the icy mountain runoff. The boathouse, still a hunter green like the eyes that’d moved above him that amazing last night. Jared, nearly forty now, blushed as he remembered his naivety. He’d returned again to the camp where he’d fallen in love for the first time. Where he’d fallen in real love a second time. Where memories of deep kisses and warm tan skin and idealizing the beginning of the rest of his life could all still be triggered by an old Hank Williams song **chasing him** on the radio.

_ “Today I passed you on the street, and my heart fell at your feet. I can't help it if I'm still in love with you."_

Jared parked the truck, hugging his son who came bounding down the path from the lodge. As Jared loaded bags into the back of the truck, he couldn’t help but wonder if his life would’ve ended up differently if he’d come back like he was asked, like his heart begged him to. If he’d left the stuffy classrooms and mathematics books for bonfires and endless kisses in the moonlight. He knew he should’ve returned, lived everyday waking up to deep green eyes that reflected pieces of him that he’d never find again. It was a lifetime ago, but Jared had **never forgotten**.

“Jay?” The voice was hesitant, even shaky over the one syllable. But it was him- the same voice, yet twenty years deeper. There was obvious pain laced with hope behind the words. “Is that really you?”

Jared turned away from his truck slowly, his heart thudding in his chest. He removed his Aviators and took in a deep breath, finally coming face to face with the man who’d changed him forever.

“**Jensen.** **Hi.**”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> These people are real but this fanfiction is not. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post.


End file.
